RUSSIA'S FOREST FAMINE 



MANY people hold the popular the North — the forests which yield 



belief that Russia is a coun- fuel — are rapidly disappearing. What 



try of limitless forests, and would you say if the English should be 



the fact that there is a wood deprived of the sea, or Switzerland of 



famine there may shock them. Such a her mountains? You would say that 



shock, however, is beneficial as it should their end had come. And fire-wood 



awaken in them an appreciation of the ,^-,^51 be considered just as vitally nec- 



efforts bemg made to perpetuate the ^gg^^y ^^ ^^^^-^ ^5 the sea is to the 



forests of this country. Ihe Russian ^ y^^^ ^nd the mountains to Switzer- 



wood faiiiine is so severe that even Mos- ,^^^^ q^^^ ^ ^^^ disappear- 



cow suttered from it last winter and a r i.- u 1 ^ ..u ^ • 1 



, c IT 1 1 V 1 1 ■ ..• ance of timber, but that can in a large 



number 01 public and charitable msti- , , 1 1 1 i, • 1 • j 



tutions were insufikiently heated. ^^^^ ^^ ^^P^^^^^ ^^ ^"f ' ^g^"' f"^ 



Mr. Menshikov tells about the con- other construction materials But fuel 



ditions in an article in the St. Peters- i" the north, m the form of fire-wood, 



burg Novoye Vremva and the follow- cannot be replaced. . . . 

 ing portions have been translated by "We take a paper view of the coun- 



The Literary Digest: try, and seeing on paper millions of 



"For many years, for whole decades, acres of woodland, we feel quite at 



we took no notice of the destruction of ease; we have been and still are the 



the forests. On the contrary, the rul- richest country in wood. This may be 



ing class, the nobility, hastened to sell true, but then our forests have remained 



out their wooded properties rather than only in the north. . . . The whole 



be compelled to sell the land. Those western Russia, recently covered with 



who sold their forests usually did so immense forests, the central provinces, 



for trifling sums, giving the brokers an are completely bared; and even such 



opportunity of earning 300, 500, and regions as Novgorod, Olonetzk, Volog- 



even 1,000 per cent on their capital, da, are being gradually afifected. The 



Those who did not sell their own en- forests which covered Russia were her 



couraged the destruction of their neigh- natural cloak, serving to warm the peo- 



bors' forests, wisely supposing that the pie and rendering it possible for them 



remaining ones would rise in price. In to live in the North. Before our very 



the end the deforestation of the coun- eyes Russia's cloak is being removed 



try assumed threatening proportions, these last fifty years, and our nation 



and when the clamor raised by the remains naked in the midst of a frozen 



press and learned bodies and chiefly desert. There is a great demand for 



by the landed proprietors themselves limber and fire-wood both in Russia and 



became unbearable, the Government in- abroad. . . . Speculation in forest 



troduced a forest-conservation law. land goes on wherever there has re- 



But, like the majority of our laws, the mained a shred of the past riches. The 



conservation was left to the will of conservation laws are being evaded with 



God. With the shrewdness of the the greatest care." 



brokers and the dishonesty of the com- Mr. Menshikov concludes with the 



mon citizen, for centuries trained in following burst of pessimistic but pa- 



the art of circumventing the law, forest triotic eloquence, whose bitterness seems 



conservation has in many places been completely justified by the condition he 



turned into an amusing comedy. The describes : 



destruction of the forests, even now. "Devoid of its wooded cover, the soil 



goes on in full blast, and the most im- is losing its moisture, the lakes and 



portant of elements which guard the rivers are drying up ; from under the 



very possibility of man's existence in surface barren sands appear, and man, 



443 



